I woke up in the comfortable Gujrat University guest room. The view outside was beautiful. The sun was still low across the fields, and a thick fog lay over everything. I took my time getting ready, and by about 10 am, went to meet my friend Anwar for breakfast at the canteen.Afterwards, we walked over to the fine arts department, where I got to visit with a few more staff members and check out some of the various majors. There is an FM radio station, as well as pottery, ceramics, printmaking, industrial design (complete with 3D printers), multimedia and much more. It was fun to see some of the work these students are doing.By then it was time for my presentations, so I went to the multimedia lab and shared some of my professional work and then my short film “Gul” and the design process behind it. The part I enjoy most in this presentation, is sharing the process of taking a vague concept and developing it through clear visuals into a finished piece. It is a lot of fun to have a conversation with the students to learn about their own interests and to see what aspects of what I am sharing interest them most. I had a lot of fun sharing with them.Speaking to some of the faculty, I heard a lot more about the usual administration issues. The problems are very real and quite serious with all of the institutions I have come across. I have faced a number of challenges in my work that really made it hit home for me, how corrupt the system here is. So in that sense, it is understandable why people vent and certainly have legitimate things to complain about. However, it does not make sense to do that with someone who just arrived. Almost everyone I met, after a brief introduction, went into what a mess things were and how impossible it was to get what they would like to do done in this environment. That’s great, but not really appropriate to dump on a guest. This happens a ton wherever I have been. When it is a friend sharing something with me, that is different, but so many places that seems to be the very first and only thing people share, is all the horrible crap they are dealing with and how things are so awful and hopeless.It is not that what they are complaining about is untrue. I think a lot of it is very accurate, however, when I look around and see all of these young students here to learn and quite clearly being taught well by these same professors, I feel like they should share more of that with me instead. After lunch, Anwar showed me some beautiful displays by the industrial design and ceramics departments. The work looked beautiful, and it was quite clear that the staff really do care about their students. From there, I got a high speed ride into town to the local bus stand. I hopped on a little wagon (van) for Rawalpindi as there was no direct bus to Peshawar from there.We had only gone a few miles, when the wagon stopped by the side of the road. There was some kind of issue, so another one was called and eventually we all piled into it and were on our way. I kept dosing off and being jolted awake by the sudden starts and stops. There was an older man next to me who kept mumbling things that were hard to understand. At one point hey yelled out to the driver to let him off at Mundra. Eventually we got there, and the driver pulled over. This guy starts asking everyone whoever wanted to get off at Mundra should get off. He kept asking who it was over and over. Finally someone said, you are the one who asked to stop here. He seemed to have forgotten but since so many insisted that it was him, he relented. He was kind of entertaining like that, announcing stops from there on and giving advice to people on where to get off and which route to take the rest of the way. It was all pretty funny.Eventually, I hopped off in Islamabad and got on a van for Peshawar. It took a while for passengers to fill up, but after an hour we were on our way. It was dark and my suitcase was wedged on top of my lap. I stared out the window at blobs in the shadows, between dosing off for a few moments and looking for signs to see how close we were to Peshawar. Once at the station, I called my friend who came and picked me from the Daewood stand down the street. We drove past a ton of secured areas that had been attacked by suicide bombers in the past, including the school bombing last year. This city has been through a lot.We met up with some more friends of Abdur Rahman’s at a studio, then went out for some food. The restaurant was closing, but we were in luck, they had one prepared chicken left. It was seasoned more or less with just salt, green peppers and lemon. It was really delicious and much more subtle on flavors than spicier food in Lahore.From there we head back and I went to sleep.